Kenseth looks for boost at Dover

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Like a pitcher reaching back for his favorite off-speed pitch with the tying run on base or a football team using its best running back on a key fourth-down to get a win, Matt Kenseth is hoping to use Dover International Speedway to get something he hasn't had in a while.A little boost to a lagging season.The Wisconsin native, a fixture in NASCAR's championship race the past six years, finds himself in an unusual situation following last Sunday's Coca-Cola 600. After his seventh-place finish at Charlotte -- following a strong sixth at Darlington -- Kenseth is still outside the Chase cutoff, 190 points out of 12th and in 16th.Naturally, any athlete would turn to something that works best for him -- a slider down in the dirt, a well-timed blitz, maybe a full-court press. For the 36-year-old Roush Fenway driver, it's the 24-degree banked Delaware speedway."Dover is probably my favorite track for a lot of different reasons," said Kenseth, who moved up from 20th in points with his 600 finish. "My first Cup race was there, plus we've won a couple times there in the Nationwide Series, then we got our first Cup win there last year, so we've had a lot of good times at Dover."And what Kenseth is hoping to find on Dover's steep inclines and self-cleaning straight-aways is a variable that all drivers need in a championship campaign: Momentum.Gillett Evernham Motorsports and driver Kasey Kahne showcased over one spectacularly successful week at Charlotte what momentum will do for a team and what the results can be.The ultra-popular Kahne was voted into, and then won, the all-star race -- no doubt spearheaded by those clumsy "Allstate Girls" who are infatuated with him in the commercial. He backed that up with a points-race win in the 600 for two big victories in eight days. Not too shabby."That little bit of confidence, that little bit of bounce in your step, that little bit of motivation," team co-owner Ray Evernham said when asked what momentum meant in racing. "It maybe makes you look a little bit harder at something, makes you be a little bit more confident in a decision."I can tell you that this team has had a much different step since they won that race here last week," Evernham added after the 600 win. "When you feel like the best, you act like the best, and you have more confidence in the things that you do."Kenseth knows what it's like to be the best because that's just what he was during the 2003 season. He used precision-like consistency to post a win, 11 top fives and just two DNFs on the way to handing owner Jack Roush the first of two consecutive Cup championships.And if we're working with sports analogies here, the whole NASCAR season is a pitcher working with a full count and the tying run 90 feet away. Kenseth has three "Monster Mile" wins, and Sunday represents the halfway point of the Cup regular season. It's really time to get moving.Gradually shifting out of neutral in a season that needs to get in gear, Kenseth is definitely banking on the high-banked Dover as a starting point.(Bill Whitehead covers NASCAR for Scripps Treasure Coast (Fla.) Newspapers, The Stuart News, Fort Pierce Tribune and Vero Beach Press Journal. E-mail wwhitehe@ircc.net.)